10 Reasons Why Email Marketing Should Be Your Absolute Priority
The one problem with email marketing is that it’s not as shiny and sexy as social media. Fortunately, that’s the only problem because when it comes to comparing them as marketing vehicles and return-on-investment, email is by far the most effective way of directly affecting your bottom line and actually growing your business.
Here are 10 reasons to prove it.
1. Penetration
There are more than 4 billion email accounts today. 95% of online consumers use email and 91% check their email at least once a day. There is simply no competition. More importantly, it is such an integral part in our lives, no human being walks around saying he will quit email.
2. Reach
In social media, we usually talk about “potential reach” to refer to the number of followers. However, your content only reaches a small fraction of that. Although emails are only opened by a fraction of subscribers, here’s the difference. The actual message will reach its destination and then the recipient has the option to read it or not.
3. Life span
In a recent study, 75% of Facebook post impressions were achieved in just two hours and 30 minutes and 75% of the “reach” happens in only one hour and 50 minutes. The life span of a Tweet is so short, its popularity can be predicted in the first 5 minutes. On the other hand, email doesn’t die, it needs to be killed. Email sits there inside your subscriber’s inbox waiting to be acknowledged, even if it’s just to delete it, it requires of an action to end its life.
4. Return-on-investment
60% of marketers say email marketing is producing ROI and 32% believe it will eventually. For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.
5. Analytics
Social media has proven over the years that measuring success is still under discussion and many companies have different ways and systems to do so. The topic of measuring ROI produces hundreds of blog posts every year without coming to a solid conclusion. Email, on the other hand, has a set of solid metrics that have been the standard for years – Growth, Open Rate, Click Rate, Complaints, Unsubscribes, and you can take it from there and even track sales and revenue.
6. Engagement
You don’t usually hear the words “email” and “engagement” in the same sentence. If you are a small business, email needs to become the ultimate engagement vehicle, a true two-way street. We’re not talking about public engagement like Twitter or Facebook. We’re talking about one-on-one with prospects that have clearly expressed interest by joining your email list.
7. Integration
The beauty of all this is that email and social media are friends, especially Facebook. If you’re failing to see these potential connections, you’re probably wasting great opportunities, not only for growth but to establish cross platform initiatives.
8. Promotional
77% prefer to receive promotional content via email, while only 4% prefers Facebook. Facebook is viewed by the average user as a place to connect and interact with friends and family. Email is perceived differently, perhaps due to its privacy or simply because we’ve grown used to receiving promotional items in the mix with other types.
9. Mobility
66% of Gmail messages are opened on mobile devices, while 50% of all “Unique Opens” and 40% of all “Unique Clicks” happen on mobile. While it’s understandable that the majority of transactions will take place on the web, mobile email already accounts for 13%. These are not small numbers and, while some marketers worry about having to be “compatible”, the smart ones are busy working on a whole new channel to deliver their messages: right to the hand of the subscriber.
10. Personalisation
Email has the power to send one piece of content to thousands of people and still have some level of personalisation. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Segmentation of your list allows you to separate subscribers in different groups to send highly targeted messages depending on actions taken or specific times.
Conclusion
Email is the only channel of communication that remains private, that is a direct connection between you and your prospect, and most importantly, it has an opt-in process that turns it into the purest form of permission marketing.
SOURCE: The Internet Business Mentor
